Moment of Truth (15 page)

With a demeanour designed to please on top of heartfelt gratitude, Elspeth Mattingly would be a bosom companion to Aubrey Fitzwilliam, close enough to be privy to whatever Aubrey knew and then to feed it back to her Holmland masters.

He grimaced at that prospect, but he was sure there had to be more. He imagined Elspeth accompanying George and him on missions, where she'd be relaying plans to the enemy in secret. He saw her teasing him, keeping him delightfully wrong footed, making sure she spent time with him, enough time to be introduced to his family.

Oh my.
Aubrey closed his eyes for an instant as the possibilities hit him.

If she played her part well enough, Elspeth Mattingly could meet the Albion Prime Minister, and have access to him in private, unguarded circumstances.

The plan showed all the hallmarks of deep deviousness and complex planning. It fairly smelled of Dr Mordecai Tremaine. A plan that was undone by George Doyle's looking for Gallian romance novels. As soon as that happened, she was quick enough to see that she was undone – and that others would put two and two together quickly enough to make her position untenable.

Thank goodness for George,
he thought, not for the first time.

‘So she did not plan to leave,' Captain Bourdin said, interrupting Aubrey's thoughts. ‘It was spontaneous.'

‘I think she wanted to stay.' Caroline glanced pointedly at Aubrey. ‘Having embedded herself in the Directorate, I'm sure she was going to do her best to gain the trust of those around her. It would mean she could be privy to sensitive information useful to our enemies.'

Aubrey found himself going back over his conversations with Elspeth and wondering what he'd said. Nothing vital, he hoped.

He made promises to Captain Bourdin to make sure a copy of the report Aubrey compiled for the Department would be forwarded to the Embassy. The unfortunate Bourdin handed Aubrey the ensorcelled pistol, which Aubrey took with some reluctance, even though he understood the Department's Forensic team could investigate it much better than any personnel in the Embassy. He probed it enough to confirm that it was indeed embedded with a spell to send rounds astray. The cultural attaché couldn't have hit what he was aiming at, not in a million years.

After slipping the pistol into a satchel, Aubrey shook hands with Captain Bourdin. ‘I want to assure you that the Department will take care of things,' he said, doing his best to sound like a decisive leader.

‘Things?'

‘The would-be assassin. Mattingly. Things like that. The Department prides itself on not leaving loose ends lying about the place.'

‘That's it,' George said brightly. ‘Think of the Department as a big pair of scissors, determined to take care of those annoying loose ends.'

Before George could strangle the metaphor any more, Aubrey took him by the shoulders and steered him toward the door. ‘We must get back to headquarters, captain. Important matters to discuss. Good luck.'

Once outside the Embassy, much to Aubrey's delight, Caroline suggested that they go back together, since Walter and Gregory were busy with cooking and plumbing, and since her pose as a typist had been compromised.

They left Captain Bourdin standing, hands behind his back, dejectedly staring at the empty hospital trolley that could be the remains of his career.

At the gatehouse, a panting young man in a Gallian uniform caught up with them. ‘Monsieur Fitzwilliam, a moment.' He stopped, put a hand to his chest and caught his breath. ‘Captain Bourdin. He would like a last word with you.'

Aubrey made a face. It had been a long morning. He shrugged at Caroline and George. ‘You two go on. I'll catch up.'

The messenger handed Aubrey over to another messenger, who took him to an older woman in one of the back offices, who glanced at the slip of paper (turquoise) the messenger gave her and then she took him right to the end of a narrow corridor on the third floor. ‘Wait here,' she said and left Aubrey without even a slip of paper to call his own.

Five minutes later, the door in front of him opened. ‘Enter,' a woman's voice ordered.

One step inside, and that was all he knew as huge pain took hold of the back of his head.

As a fuzzy level of awareness returned, Aubrey understood that he was tied to a chair and securely gagged. Or gagged to a chair and securely tied, one or the other. His head was ringing like a bell, so details like that were hard to work out.

The figure standing between him and the door spoke, and he winced. ‘I'm sorry, but you're too dangerous to handle any other way.'

‘Elspeth,' he said. Or tried to. It came out more like ‘Rrgwrwflg,' thanks to the gag, thus proving its efficacy.

She took a revolver out of a satchel that Aubrey dimly realised as his. He had enough wherewithal to wish that ropes weren't so good at binding as they were, but Elspeth shook her head. ‘I couldn't leave this here. I might need it to get out of this awful country.'

Aubrey squinted. With an effort, he recognised it as the pistol that had nearly shot him. The pistol that he'd been given by Captain Bourdin. The pistol that had been magically treated to be silent – and to make sure it missed.

She studied him for a moment. ‘I suppose I should just shoot you now, you know. I'd be bound to get a medal for it.'

What scared Aubrey most was how businesslike she sounded.

She pointed the pistol at him and he was sure his heart stopped beating. ‘On the other hand...' She raised the pistol and Aubrey's heart scurried out from wherever it had gone to hide and started beating again, hard. ‘If I happen to get captured before I can waltz my way out of here, I might be better off if I don't. Spending the war in one of your internment camps sounds preferable to a hanging. Even with your ghastly weather.'

She crossed the room, and leaned close until all he could see was her large, insistent eyes. She patted his cheek. ‘It's a pity that I can't continue this job,' she whispered. ‘You really are quite appealing.'

She slipped out and Aubrey surrendered to utter confusion.

‘We had our suspicions that she was a Holmland agent,' Commander Tallis said. ‘Nothing concrete, but suspicions nonetheless.'

Back at Darnleigh House, Aubrey, George and Caroline faced Commander Tallis and Commander Craddock across a long, metal-topped table. The room was on the third floor, but it had no windows. The walls were undecorated, for Aubrey wouldn't have called the peculiar shade of institutional green paint decoration.

Aubrey's head ached, and his pride, even though neither George nor Caroline had said anything when, after his non-appearance for two hours, they returned to the Gallian Embassy and found him bound and gagged with Elspeth Mattingly long gone.

‘So you let her try to kill me just to see if those suspicions were well founded?' Aubrey asked. He was accustomed to the oblique thinking that went on in the realm of security, of plans and plots within plans and plots, so he saw how such a course of events could unfold. It didn't mean that he liked it.

‘That was unfortunate. We thought that putting her in a team with you would force her hand but it appears that we inadvertently gave her just what she wanted,' Craddock said. He had a silver letter opener on the table in front of him, perfectly parallel with its edge. ‘In any event, we thought she would have done more gradual embedding. Something less dramatic.'

Perhaps she knows something we don't,
Aubrey thought. Such a risky display might have been forced upon her, if time was growing short – which was an ominous thought.

‘This means, of course, that your team is one member short.' Craddock and Tallis shared a look, and Tallis shifted uncomfortably in his seat. ‘It seems inevitable that Miss Hepworth replace our enemy agent.'

‘It's the most efficient solution,' Tallis growled.

Caroline stiffened. ‘Permission to speak, sirs?'

‘I was unaware that you ever made that request.' Craddock picked up the letter opener and held it in both hands.

Tallis glanced at him. ‘Permission granted.'

‘That would mean my original team would be one person short. I can't let them down like that.'

‘I appreciate your loyalty,' Tallis said. ‘Rest assured, your team will be taken care of.' Caroline subsided, mollified, as Tallis held up a folder. Aubrey couldn't gauge the extent of her feelings. Was she angry with him? Did she think that he hadn't been suspicious enough of Elspeth because he'd been blinded by her charms? ‘Fitzwilliam, you haven't spent any time with the magical surveillance section, have you?'

‘Just a familiarisation tour, sir.' The magical surveillance section was such a speciality that the sensitive magicians who were part of it were trained for months before being accepted into its ranks. Being able to detect magical perturbations at a distance was a rare, refined skill and Aubrey had great admiration for those who had it.

‘Our best surveillance operatives are concerned,' Craddock said. ‘They are detecting some remarkably unusual emanations from north-west Holmland. Near the border with Gallia.'

Aubrey tried to remember a map of the Continent, but George spoke up first. ‘From Stalsfrieden?'

‘In that area. What do you know about it?'

‘A centre for heavy industry,' Caroline said promptly. ‘Not armaments, but farm machinery, some lorry building, a few metalworking plants.'

‘It's a river port, too,' Aubrey said, in an effort to hold up his end. ‘And an important railway hub.'

Tallis grunted and pushed the folder across the desk. ‘There's more here.'

George scooped it up. ‘Hmm ... I didn't know it was the centre of Holmland playing card manufacture.'

‘I take it that lorry building and playing cards wouldn't cause the sort of perturbations the surveillance people are talking about,' Aubrey said. ‘So you're suggesting that something new is happening in Stalsfrieden?'

‘New and disturbing,' Tallis said. ‘Disturbing enough to make us concerned.'

‘When do we leave?' Caroline asked.

Aubrey hesitated. He'd been thinking that their role was consultative here.

‘You are a novice team, in the extreme,' Craddock said, pointing with his letter opener. ‘Normally, we wouldn't be sending you out for months. In many ways, your training has only begun.'

Aubrey's excitement grew. That didn't sound like a contradiction. They were going on assignment! He clamped down on his enthusiasm, lest he talk them out of it.

‘These are unusual times,' Tallis said. ‘We've mobilised all our experienced people, they're already scattering themselves throughout Albion and the Continent, monitoring sensitive sites, inserting themselves into suspect organisations.' He sucked a breath in through his teeth. ‘If I had my way...'

Craddock tapped the desk with the letter opener. ‘What our esteemed Commander Tallis is trying to say is that we have little choice but to use inexperienced teams like yourself. With trepidation, of course, but these are straitened times.'

Tallis's face was something like a gargoyle, something like a topographic map as it tried to express his reluctance. ‘At the bottom of it all, you are now members of the Albion armed forces, for better or for worse, so it's your duty to respond when needed.' He paused. ‘And remember: you are subject to military discipline, but you have the support of the entire Albion fighting forces.'

Commander Craddock took this up. ‘Which is a roundabout way of pointing out that the military is a hierarchical beast. From Brigadier Ramsthorn down to the lowliest, rawest recruit, the chain of command is an inviolable thing.'

An inkling nudged Aubrey at that moment, a sense of knowing what Craddock was about to say. It wasn't totally a comfortable feeling and Aubrey was on the verge of actually squirming before he caught himself.

‘The upshot of this,' Craddock continued, ‘is that before you're let loose, your commission needs clarifying. For each of you. You may have to deal with Gallian officers, and your status must be confirmed.'